


How do I say that I love you?

by MargueriteSomebodyoranother



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Scene HLV, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bring your goggles, But she still needs to go, Fix-It of Sorts, Gratuitous Overuse of Italics, I don't know what I'm doing with the tagging thing, John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes, John-centric, M/M, Mary isn't evil, No Ragefest!John, No Smut, Not Brit-picked or anything, One Shot, POV John Watson, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson, maybe? - Freeform, some angst though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:14:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27094135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MargueriteSomebodyoranother/pseuds/MargueriteSomebodyoranother
Summary: John lived because of Sherlock and because of Mary.Sherlock insisted that, based on Mary's actions, she loved him.Sherlock's actions were the same as Mary's.Sherlock loved John Watson, too.
Relationships: John Watson/Mary Morstan (referenced), Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	How do I say that I love you?

**Author's Note:**

> There is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention of suicidal ideation. Do what's safest for you, dear reader.
> 
> This just sort of happened one day, and I delayed for months before I posted it. This is my first fic, and I may add to it later, but I'm satisfied with it being a one-shot for now. No one wants to fiddle with author's notes - they just want to get on with the story - so the rest the notes are at the end.

The (thankfully) incessant beeping of the heart monitor was noticeably absent the day he brought Sherlock back to Baker Street (back _home_ , his brain treacherously whispered) but it still hammered in the back of his mind like an a warning, a reminder that it could have been silent for a very, very different reason. So many emotions battled for dominance in John's mind. The man he thought he lost once, who had utterly destroyed John after snatching him from the brink of suicide and depression, only to send him spiraling back later....that man was now reclining on the sofa, slowly piecing himself back together after being shot by John's wife a month into their fucking marriage....God, it was so complicated.

He still remembered Sherlock's words, thought perhaps he was high on whatever drug cocktail got him through that horrible night (and he almost didn't get through it). John grimaced to himself again, remembering how Sherlock, weak, pale, trembling, heart stopping again because of _course_ , John _saw_ but didn't _observe_. He didn't notice Sherlock bleeding out in front of him, fighting to save what never should have existed in the first place. He left Sherlock to call for the ambulance himself because he was too distracted by his murderous, lying wife to notice his best friend dying right in front of him.

Still, those words that never made sense coming from Sherlock's mouth, words that John simply couldn't fathom, even after learning all about Mary. How could he trust her? He didn't even know who she was!

“You're thinking too loudly,” rumbled a rough baritone from the sitting room.

John's eyes refocused and took in Sherlock, lain upon the sofa as if he flounced onto it's worn surface after a bout of histrionics. _If only_ , he thought. If John ignored Sherlock's pinched eyes, wrinkled forehead, the tension of his jaw _radiating_ pain, then it could have been any other day from three years ago.

“You said I could trust her,” John said, his brain catching up with what his mouth was saying a fraction too late.

“So I did,” was Sherlock's only reply.

Silence stretched on for a moment while John tucked his chin to his chest, a half-smile on his face belying the turmoil in his mind. He huffed a humorless laugh, shaking his head at the simple ease Sherlock reiterated his statement.

“No, Sherlock,” he began. “ Who knows what goes on in that...mind palace of yours,” John's voice was strained, despite his admittedly half-hearted efforts to keep calm. He looked to the fireplace, the stinging in his eyes a warning that he shouldn't have this conversation right now, not right when his patient – his best friend – had just gotten home from hospital and is nursing a fucking bullet wound to the chest. But since when did John ever stick to convention where Sherlock was concerned? “But normal people would find it difficult to trust a person who's lied from day one and murdered someone in cold blood.”

“We don't know anyone like that, do we, John?” Sherlock sighed, cracking one eye open at John, and the bastard actually tossed him a weak smile.

“Oh, God, what is my life?” John wondered out loud, casting his eyes to the ceiling in mock supplication to a higher power that neither of the two men believed in, anyway. Much. “Yeah, Sherlock, you're a lying, manipulating bastard, and I did shoot people, but it was all for a good reason.”

Sherlock hummed in response, closing his eye once more. John watched the steady rise and fall of his chest, as he had since the first night in hospital, needed the visual confirmation that Sherlock was still alive, despite all odds. He knew how, for several minutes, that chest did not rise, that heart did not beat, and John recalled a different time, when he didn't feel his friend's pulse as blood pooled on the concrete..... No, that was all fake. But it was real for John.

Watching the machine breathe for Sherlock for days as he struggled to heal, John's mind had little else to do than to think. Round and round the thoughts of his mind swirled, an angry maelstrom of emotions and memories and barely contained tears. His chest clinched as he remembered how Sherlock fell, how John's heart stopped when Sherlock hit the ground, how it seemed John's life drained out of him and mingled with Sherlock's blood. Sherlock had found a broken ex-soldier who was days away from eating a bullet in despair, and pieced him back together again with his own brilliance and vitality. And then broke him again. His insides twisted with the remembered loss, deeper than he expected for a mere friend and flatmate. He learned he loved him, Sherlock, but never could figure out if it was actually in love with his best friend, or if he just romanticized the past, like Ella suggested during his last visit to her.

“You almost took me with you, you know,” John's voice was barely above a whisper, but it was startling in the silence of the sitting room. Sherlock didn't stir, but John knew he was listening. “When you jumped, I felt like I died inside.” He continued, staring ahead at nothing, “I lost friends before, in Afghanistan, but it didn't hurt like it did with you. Once we cleared your name, all I wanted to do was go to the grave with you.”

“John-” Sherlock started, eyes opened wide, mouth a thin line.

John huffed a deprecating laugh, continued over whatever protest Sherlock was about to voice.

“I think Mary knew. She didn't treat me with kid gloves like everyone else. I was just some regular bloke to her.” He smiled a bit at the memory. “She would start every morning with the cheesiest, most awful dad-joke she could find, I mean, really they were appalling, but she did it every morning. I asked her why one day, and she said 'Just to see you smile, Dr. Watson. There's a bet that I can't get you to laugh, and I really don't want to lose ten quid.' “ John remembered how he had just stared at her, but she didn't look away, held his gaze with her mirthful blue eyes and offered to split her lunch with him. He mumbled something and walked away, but he met her for lunch, anyway. The next day she handed him a fiver, said he should be entitled to half the winnings because it was his smile, after all, and just like that, Mary breathed life into him all over again. It wasn't like living with Sherlock, but she offered a lifeline, and he'd taken it.

John's smile faded from his face. “But Mary isn't Mary, is she?” He asked, his eyes turning sad. His voice was flat, a futile attempt to hide the tumult of emotions he felt. “She lied, from the beginning. She knew what losing you did to me, and she was willing to do it again, make me go through it all again, to keep her secret.” His eyes focused again as he looked at Sherlock's stricken face. “I don't think I would have survived it a second time.” He swallowed around the painful lump in his throat. “She had to have known that.”

John hoped that Sherlock would glaze over the implied question, but even in pain and drugged up, nothing escaped the notice of the World's Most Observant Man.

Sherlock struggled to sit up, leaning against the back of the sofa to meet John's gaze with his own. John noticed the intensity that burned behind them.

“John, Mary did lie. But not about her love for you.”

“You call that _love_ , Sherlock?” John forced through gritted teeth. “ _Love_ doesn't lie to who you love the most. _Love_ doesn't shoot first and ask questions later. _Love_ doesn't destroy the ones you're supposed to care about!” John shouted at the end.

“Doesn't it?” Sherlock asked, nostrils flaring with his own emotion.

“She killed you, Sherlock!” John jumped up, yelling at his patient but right now, he couldn't stop. “You told me it was surgery, but I've seen the wound, I've seen the damage and I know what happened to you. You weren't supposed to survive that shot. And she _lied_ , Sherlock. Came to the hospital to console me and threaten you. Just like _Magnussen_.” John spit the name in disgust.

He noticed Sherlock's slight flinch at the reminder of Magnussen's visit. Assault, more like. His gut twisted when he learned Mary did the same thing, threatening Sherlock when he was too weak to defend himself. God, she really was no better. How could he have been so blind to her?

“Why didn't you see it?” John asked, voicing the question that plagued him since Leinster Gardens. “You see everything. Why didn't you see what Mary was?”

Sherlock closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged, head leaned back into the sofa again, as if the question itself plucked his remaining strength away. John regretted asking, and was about to dismiss the conversation entirely, but Sherlock spoke first.

“I did notice, John,” he murmured quietly, “that night at the restaurant, when I returned. I knew she was a liar. But,” he swallowed. “I didn't allow myself to look further.” Sherlock opened his eyes and looked pleadingly into John's. The man who would never beg, pleaded silently with John. “She said she would talk you around, after everything. I ruined your proposal, I didn't think you were even my friend anymore.” His eyes cast downward. “She didn't know me, but she said she'd talk to you on my behalf.”

John was silent, remembering her cheeky smile. _I like him,_ she had said.

“John, just as I could tell she was a liar, I could see how she cares for you. And how you care for her.”

“She wasn't supposed to be like that,” John choked out, echoing his statement from that night in Baker Street.

“She made the best of an impossible situation, I think,” Sherlock continued softly, his voice pitched low. “She lied, but she didn't see any other choice. Don't you see, John? She wasn't killing me, she was protecting you.”

“Not if she was taking you away from me again, she wasn't.” John insisted. His eyes drifted down to his wedding ring. Despite everything, he had never taken it off. “I loved her. She brought me back. Kept me going.”

“Which is how I know you can trust her, John,” Sherlock insisted, jaw tense with pain. “She fixed what I destroyed. She did what I couldn't.” Sherlock gasped and his hand went to his chest, hovering near the bullet wound. Whatever retort John was going to say died on his lips at his friend's pain. He got up and retrieved the pain medicine and a glass of water, setting them on the coffee table before extending his hand to Sherlock.

“We'll talk later. You're in pain, and need to rest. Let me help you to bed.”

“Here's just fine, thanks,” Sherlock said, holding his hand out for the medicine. John placed them in his palm, and watched Sherlock swallow them dry, following with the glass of water at John's raised eyebrow. He helped Sherlock lie down on the sofa again, and tucked him in with the afghan normally on the back of John's chair. Sherlock, at least, seemed grateful for the abrupt ending to that conversation.

“It's fine, John,” Sherlock mumbled before falling asleep.

John sat in his chair, again watching Sherlock's chest rise and fall, his mind churning while Sherlock rested. He remembered Sherlock's tear-filled phone call...John had seen him produce tears from nowhere for a case, and he was an accomplished actor, but he could tell the difference between Sherlock faking and Sherlock being authentic, and he knew that day, those were real tears. Was Sherlock scared? He knew that, even well-prepared, there was only a 50/50 shot of surviving such a fall. He remembered what Sherlock told him late into the night after a case before the wedding, about the snipers and how he had intended for John to stay behind with Mrs. Hudson, how Moriarty blackmailed him to jump. He remembered how haunted Sherlock looked when he described how difficult it was to stay still while John ran to him, even after being concussed by the bicyclist, knowing that the slightest move to comfort John as he ached to do would reveal the truth to the sniper, who undoubtedly had John in his sights even then. He wouldn't tell John what happened during the time he was away, but John could figure out for himself that it wasn't the grand adventure he assumed Sherlock had done at first. How difficult had it been for him, to lie like that? And maintain the lie for years? How had he handled the fear of knowing that if his lie was found out, then it was all over?

Just like Mary.

Oh. God.

He thought about Sherlock returning straight from his mission to John, how he, the least sociable man in London, planned John's wedding. How the most scathing man ever to exist delivered such a heartfelt best man's speech that the whole venue was in tears. Yes, he did also solve an attempted-murder, but that Sherlock was there at all was contrary to everything John thought he knew about the consulting detective. He thought about how that bloody lunatic climbed out of his hospital room window to set up how Mary would reveal herself, knowing that John would never have believed him otherwise. He jumped for him, stayed dead for him, took a beating or three from him, and risked his life for him again to not only reveal the truth to John, but to try to reconcile him with his wife with his last breaths.

He thought of Mary, of her giggles at the most inane things, the warmth of her smile, her sighs as John made love to her, how she loved him when he was broken and had nothing left to give of himself.

John lived because of Sherlock and because of Mary.

Sherlock insisted that, based on Mary's actions, she loved him.

Sherlock's actions were the same as Mary's.

Sherlock loved John Watson, too.

The realization was like a kick to the solar plexus. He looked over at the sleeping form on the sofa, oblivious to the earth shaking beneath John's feet. _Sherlock loved John_. There was no other explanation. _You chose her_ , Sherlock said, and now John could hear the _instead of me_ that Sherlock never voiced. John's head sank into his hands. Good God, what was he supposed to do? _Because Sherlock Holmes lives, John Watson lives_ , he'd written, so long ago it seemed. He knew, without giving voice to it in his head, that he loved Sherlock. Every bit as much as he loved Mary. So why could he forgive Sherlock, but not her? Clearly, Sherlock didn't see why, either. Maybe he thought that if he couldn't forgive Mary, he couldn't forgive Sherlock, either? Sherlock had gone out of his way to give John everything, do everything to ensure John's happiness.

_You chose her._

_I like him._

John sank his head into his hands, and bit back a sob as the weight of his realizations tightened around his heart like a vise. How could he have missed that Sherlock loved him? John wondered how Sherlock must have felt as he gave him to Mary, who shot him in return. Despite being friends, being supportive of their work together, knowing what losing Sherlock had done to him the first time, Mary fucking shot him, then kept lying to John. Mary may have thought she loved him, but she tried to destroy Sherlock to keep John for herself. And that is something he could never ignore.

John leaned back in his chair, emotionally wrung out and physically exhausted. He would have to tell Sherlock, make that madman understand that he could never forgive what Mary had done. He and Sherlock had a lot to talk about ( _Obviously_ , Sherlock's voice in his head said).

John glanced again at the wedding ring. The ring was only a few months old, yet it was already tarnished and dirty. _State of the marriage, right there._ He worked it off his finger and stood, resolute, and set it on the mantle next to the skull.

**Author's Note:**

> This is really my head canon on how it should have gone in Season 3. I don't expect a perfect John (that would be so boring!) but I don't want the version of John we got. So, because of the wonderful world of fanfiction, I can wave a magic wand of sorts and *poof* away Ragefest!John and restore him as a character who can not only grow, but thrive post-Reichenbach. I also didn't want to be unfair to Mary. I liked the idea of Mary, and I can see her as a gray character who isn't evil, but didn't make the best choices, and must face the consequences of her choices. I don't think an authentic John could ever have forgiven her, baby on the way or not, and I tried to illustrate the struggle John would have faced while remaining faithful to his character. Season 3 and 4 John were not in-character John, but many other, far more talented people than I have already addressed that :)
> 
> I love discourse, so of course I welcome comments, whether our head canons agree or not. That's the beauty of fanfiction - it's a slice of the author's heart, and worthy in it's own right. 
> 
> Apologies if I missed any triggers, etc. If I need to add a tag or warning, please let me know. Any mistakes are mine, even if the characters aren't.
> 
> I'm always up for a chat about Sherlock :) Come find me on my [Tumblr!](https://margueritesomebodyoranother.tumblr.com)


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